


refracting, polarizing

by jeien



Category: Sound Horizon (Band)
Genre: Immortality, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Vague Descriptions of Disintegration
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-04
Updated: 2019-06-04
Packaged: 2020-04-07 21:09:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19093189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jeien/pseuds/jeien
Summary: Humans are already fragile as their natural selves: what more when the human system morphs into an immortal one?





	refracting, polarizing

**Author's Note:**

> "did you trim this so it'd be 420 words?" YES I DID
> 
> another quick thing i wrote because wozwald made good writing music

The side effects aren’t immediate.

Honestly, he should have known better than to believe a major bodily change would be free of any side effects, considering illness and treatment thereof. Humans are already fragile as their natural selves: what more when the human system morphs into an immortal one?

It had begun with a thrum. A new energy coursing through his veins, riding along the waves of dread that suddenly lapped at the pit of his stomach.

The waves crested, washing over him and pulling him into a terrifying darkness. He can’t see, can’t hear, can’t smell and, with a dawning horror, he realizes he can’t breathe.

But he can feel: the vice within his chest, the burn of his lungs, the phantom hands running along his skin and seeking to grab every inch yet passing through him completely. He’s being pinched, squeezed, pulled, peeled away bit by bit.

_Where am I?_

_Who am I?_

_What am I?_

Slowly unwinding, ribbons upon ribbons of himself spiraling down into the abyss—

“My prince.”

A crackle of light comes, bursting his vision with pure whiteness for a mere moment, before his eyes adjust to the man above him. The one straddling his hips with calloused hands gripping his shoulders. The one who moves to give a quick and firm push against his chest, jumpstart him back to reality.

He breathes.

“Elef.”

“You’ll be alright,” Elef says, getting off him and helping him sit up. “You’re still acclimating.”

He vaguely registers the feeling of Elef’s hand on his back, palm flat and running in slow strokes against his sweat-dampened shift. It’s different from the sensations of the darkness. It is comforting, a little awkward—Elef had never been a tactile man, but he can feel the sentiment through each motion. As if he knew how to fix it.

“This… It happened to you too?”

“Yes,” Elef replies after some time, voice barely above a whisper. He can parse out the deeper meaning from that one word alone: _It happened. It still happens._ And Elef can see that he’s discovered the unsaid layer because he follows with, “Not often now. But from time to time.”

The trembling ebbs away eventually. The ordeal has left him exhausted and, against his regal upbringing, he slumps into Elef’s waiting arms. He feels the man tense before those arms still awkwardly wrap around him in a loose embrace.

“Stay with me, Elef,” he orders. “Keep those things far from me.”

Elef grunts in response. “I’ll do my best.”  

**Author's Note:**

> come scream with me on twitter


End file.
